The Knight Institute’s press freedom work seeks to fortify the infrastructure of First Amendment law and values to meet 21st century pressures. For journalists and media organizations, those pressures arise from myriad sources, not only from a government that can be fiercely resistant to public oversight and accountability and is increasingly antagonistic toward reporters and media outlets. Journalists are also targeted by surveillance tools that create new vulnerabilities for reporters and reporting, whether in the hands of governments or private actors. And they are pressured by the capacity of generative artificial intelligence-driven technology to produce and disseminate news, and news-like, pieces.

The Knight Institute supports freedom of the press throughout its programming. Recent work has included Covering Democracy: Protests,  Police, and the Press, a report by Senior Visiting Fellow Joel Simon; Flashpoint: Protests, Policing, and the Press, a Knight Institute documentary; and the research initiative, The Future of Press Freedom: Democracy, Law, and the News in Changing Times with visiting scholars RonNell Andersen Jones and Sonja R. West.

Our policy work aims to protect a broad array of newsgathering activities; prevent the government from compelling journalists to disclose their confidential sources; and protect individuals and organizations from strategic lawsuits against public participation (SLAPPs).